The present invention relates to a method and apparatus for producing a minced fish meat food product, using a split mold, in the form of the body of a shrimp or the meat of claws of a crab, and coloring the product with a tone close to the natural article.
The present inventors have established a method and apparatus for coloring minced fish meat food products in shapes of shrimp, crab, etc., as shown in their U.S. patent application Ser. No. 818,618, now U.S. Pat. No. 4,692,341. The disclosure of that application is incorporated herein by reference. The method and apparatus disclosed in the above application differs from the prior conventional method wherein a bar-shaped minced meat product is wrapped with a polyethylene film coated with a red food dye, and is then boiled or steam cooked to transfer the dye to the product. The above application discloses a method wherein an aqueous food dye is sprayed into the cavity of a split mold, then the minced fish meat material is injected into the cavity, and thereafter the material is heated to solidify the material and produce a colored product.
In the prior art described in the above application, since a liquid coloring dye is sprayed into the cavity of a split mold, the amount of the dye sprayed into the cavity tends to be excessive and the dye might drip from the joint between the halves of the mold. Hence it is necessary, as a countermeasure, to control the amount of the dye sprayed and provide a fine control of the supply of the dye. Such control is, however, rather difficult since it requires that the spraying time of the dye be kept less than a second.